CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Red Ryan spent an uncomfortable night on Stan Evans’s porch under a leaky roof and in the company of an agitated packrat. The rain cleared shortly before breakfast that Stella Morgan attended, telling the concerned army wives that she’d spent the night in the barn. Seth Roper showed up a short time later, ate his bacon and beans, and went out again. He didn’t speak to anyone and studiously ignored Stella.
Buttons Muldoon kept his strong, experienced wheelers but changed the rest of his team and then sought out Red. “We’re ready to hit the road,” he said. “The horses are rested.”
Red finished his coffee and said, “We need to talk. Outside.”
They stepped away from the cabin, and Red told Buttons what he’d seen in the barn.
“And here I thought Carter was the only one sparkin’ Miss Stella,” Buttons said.
“And I bet so does Carter.”
“You mean Roper has taken his place?”
“Seems like, don’t it?”
Buttons shook his head. “Red, this kinda thing always leads to a shooting.”
“Yeah, you’re right about that. So we got to make sure it doesn’t happen, not on this run. What Carter and Roper do in Fort Bliss is their business and no concern of Patterson and Son or its employees.”
“I don’t like it, Red. I don’t like it one little bit,” Buttons said.
“I don’t either. But in the meantime, we got to live with it.”
Buttons’s homely face took on a puzzled expression. “Why do folks love to muddy up the water and make their lives so durned complicated? Take you and me, now. I drive a stage and you ride shotgun, an’ that’s it. Nothing knotty about us.”
Red smiled. “We’re shining examples of simple men, Buttons.”
“Damn right we are,” Buttons said. “Now round up the passengers and let’s be on our way. As far as I’m concerned, the sooner we reach Fort Bliss, the better.”
* * *
Rolling under a burning sun, the stage was two hours out from Evans Station when the Apaches emerged from a shimmering heat haze, thirty mounted warriors painted for battle, led by a young man on a beautiful paint pony.
At first the Mescalero and their Chiricahua allies were content to ride parallel to the stage, well outside of effective rifle range. Then ten warriors separated from the main band and galloped ahead of the stage before deploying to their left while keeping a distance of a hundred yards between themselves and Buttons’s cantering team.
The Indians had seen Seth Roper on top with his rifle and Red Ryan up in the box, cradling his shotgun, but they didn’t know how many other guns were inside, and for the moment they were wary. Red figured that the Apaches must soon test the stage’s defenses. The younger warriors would make feints, all sound and fury, to draw fire while the older men counted the defending guns. Sizing up your enemy before a big fight was a tried-and-true strategy that had worked well for the Apache in the past.
Red leaned over and called out, “Carter, you see them?”
“See them? I can’t hardly take my eyes off them,” the man answered.
“When the Apaches attack, get down and don’t shoot,” Red yelled. “They want to count guns, and I aim to surprise them. You’re my ace in the hole, Carter, understand?”
“Yeah, I got it,” Carter said. “How will I know when it’s the real attack?”
Red’s smile was grim. “Believe me, you’ll know,” he said.
* * *
Buttons Muldoon held the team to a fast trot. If he had to make a run for it, he didn’t want the horses exhausted, though he knew full well that the lumbering coach couldn’t outdistance the tough Apache ponies at any speed.
“They’re coming!” Seth Roper called out from his perch on top. “Ryan, get ready!”
“I’m ready,” Red yelled. And then to Buttons, grinning, “As I’ll ever be.”
A dozen warriors detached themselves from the flanking group and charged at an angle, aiming to cut off the stage’s forward progress. Roper saw the danger, and his rifle roared three times as quickly as he could work the lever. The range was far, his targets moving fast, and he scored no hits. A few of the Apaches returned fire, shooting their Winchesters from the shoulder, but a galloping horse is not a steady gun platform, and their shots went wild.
More confident with a scattergun than he was with a rifle, Red Ryan gripped his Greener tight and bided his time. He didn’t have to wait long. An Apache swung his mount and rode directly at the stage. When the warrior was close enough, Red saw the blue and yellow stripes across his nose and cheekbones that marked him as a former army scout. The Apache’s intention was to kill the guard, and at a distance of twenty-five yards, he fired. A miss. The bullet plowed into the sideboard at Ryan’s feet. Twenty yards . . . the buck cranked his rifle . . . fifteen yards . . . ten . . . the Mescalero and Red triggered at the same time. Two barrels of buckshot slammed into the Apache’s chest, causing fatal damage, as the warrior’s own shot went yards too high. The Apache’s horse shied away from the rocking stage, and its rider was thrown from its back, a dead man before he hit the ground.
As Red fed shells into his shotgun, Roper dropped a speeding warrior at a distance of fifty yards and then a second. “Good shooting!” Ryan yelled, but he didn’t know if the man heard him above the din of the hurtling stage and the roar of gunfire. Moments later the Apaches peeled away and returned to the others on the flank. The attack had been a success in that it identified only a driver and two fighting men aboard the stage . . . but the butcher’s bill had been high. Unlike the Sioux or Cheyenne, the Apaches were never a numerous tribe and the deaths of three young warriors was a loss grievous enough that it stung Ilesh and the Mescalero elders.
The young war chief would attack again, but next time he would use more caution.
* * *
Aware that a cat-and-mouse game had begun, Buttons Muldoon slowed the team to a walk while Red Ryan stepped down and checked on Lucian Carter and the women. The two plump army wives looked pale and frightened, but a small Hopkins & Allen .32 revolver lay on Stella Morgan’s lap and her eyes betrayed no fear. As far as Red could tell, Carter had not drawn his guns, so the man had listened.
“Will they attack again?” Stella said.
“Depend on it,” Red said.
“Do we have a chance?” the woman said. “Any chance at all?”
“Yes, of course we do,” Red said. He walked beside the stage, his hand on the door.
Stella frowned. “That was a lie, Mr. Ryan, now tell me the truth: Do we have a chance?”
Red looked at the Apaches riding ahead of them and the ones on the side who were getting worked up into a frenzy by the shouting young warrior on the paint.
“Not much of one,” he said. Then he added what he knew was an empty platitude, “But a Patterson and Son stage always gets through.”
Stella picked up her gun. “Good, then it’s settled. I will not let myself be taken. I saw what they did to Mrs. Nolan.”
“It will not come to that,” Ryan said. “You can never tell about Apaches. If they lose more young men they may decide the prize isn’t worth the cost.”
Buttons yelled, “Red! Here they come!”
“What about me?” Carter said.
Yelling over his shoulder, Ryan said, “Sit tight. I’ll tell you when.”
* * *
Red Ryan climbed into the box, pointed at the Apaches ahead of them and said, “Buttons, straight into them at a run!”
Buttons slapped the team into a gallop, the two big wheelers, steady as rocks, setting the pace for the leaders. The stage drove into the Apache charge, splitting it in half . . . then followed a cartwheeling melee of broad, painted faces, roaring guns, and wild, yipping war cries. Red blasted a warrior who tried to skewer him with a lance made from a cavalry saber, its steel head a foot long. The man fell away, screaming, but Ryan didn’t see him drop. Behind him, Roper, bleeding from a forehead wound, fired steadily, scoring hits. Then the stage was through and there was open ground ahead. But immediately an attack came from the right, the Apaches keeping their distance as they galloped parallel to the stage, firing. Bullets slammed into the coach, splintering blue-painted wood, and Red heard a woman scream. The young warrior on the paint and the line of a dozen warriors suddenly wheeled their mounts and charged directly at the stage.
“Carter! Now!” Red yelled.
Lucian Carter reacted at once. The Apaches were close, coming on fast, well within revolver-fighting range. Carter’s blazing Colts hammered death. Shooting through the open top of the stage door, a revolver in each hand, he killed men rapidly, his big. 45 bullets punching great holes in chests, shattering skulls.
Red Ryan, fighting for his life with his own belt gun, heard Carter’s fusillade and wondered at its speed. But only for a second. The young warrior on the pinto galloped straight as an arrow for Red, his Winchester extended as though he held a pistol. The Apache’s features were contorted into a mask of hatred, but he never got time to shoot. Buttons’s whip snaked through the air and cracked like a lightning bolt across the warrior’s face. The man momentarily reeled in pain and shock, blood streaming from a slash across his right cheek. It was all the time Ryan needed. He shot the Apache high on the man’s chest, fired again, a killing bullet that entered under the chin and plowed into the brain. The Mescalero screamed, threw up his hands, and fell backward off his horse . . .
And in that instant the tide of battle turned.
The warriors close to where Ilesh fell from his paint cried out to each other in alarm, and one by one the Apaches streamed away from the battle. Their young war chief had been killed, and it was a bad omen . . . today was not a day to fight.
Roper fired a few parting shots to speed the Mescalero on their way, and a sudden silence descended on the plain, broken only by the moans of the Apache dying and the soft sobs of one of the army wives.
The sprawled bodies of nine young warriors lay around the stage, three of them wounded and those were quickly dispatched by Roper’s Colt.
Red Ryan’s immediate concern was for his passengers.
Edna Powell’s left shoulder had been burned by a bullet, and Rhoda Carr held the woman in her arms and cooed her sympathy. Stella Morgan was unharmed, her revolver still on her lap. A round had grazed Seth Roper’s head, but it was only a scratch, and Lucian Carter’s coat sleeve had been torn by an arrowhead.
“You all right, Buttons?” Ryan asked the driver.
Buttons smiled and nodded. “Red, I got nine lives, and I reckon I used up half of them in the last few minutes.”
“Four-and-a-half to go,” Red said.
“Seems like that’s what I recollect from my school day ciphers,” Buttons said. “But what does a man do with half a life?”
“Spark half a woman, eat half a pie, work for half wages and shave just half of your face.” Red grinned. “How about that for a start?”
“Sorry I asked,” Buttons said.